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Over burgers, guests are bouncing back and forth, having a smart, grown up conversation about the differences between Toronto’s three mayors since amalgamation. It’s the subject of Ed Keenan book,
Some Great Idea
, in which he goes out of his way to find both fault and praise for mayors Mel Lastman, David Miller and Rob Ford.

But I’m watching the last bite of pickle on the plate of Keenan’s wife Rebecca, because I made these pickles and I desperately want to interrupt the conversation to take credit, before they’re gone. But how can I justify that? And then
Mozilla Foundation
co-founder
Ryan Merkley
summarizes the two lessons he learned working in Miller’s office. “You’re always campaigning,” he says is the first. “Don’t leave till you’re done,” he explains the second. “If you don’t cut the ribbon on the thing you’ve done, it’s not done.”

He’s referring to Transit City, the TTC plan that mayor/coach Ford scrapped as soon as he took office. But I hear the message I want to hear and announce authorship of the pickles before the last bite is eaten.

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Keenan, was my editor when I started in this business, five years ago, writing restaurant reviews for Eye Weekly (the former name of The Grid, where he is now senior editor). When a boss tried to take advantage of me, Keenan gave me some advice that I didn’t believe until time proved him right. “It’s not right and you should speak up,” he encouraged me. “You have more power than you think.”

Again, perhaps I’m projecting, but that is also the message I take from
Some Great Idea
, that the only way forward for Toronto is through the empowerment of its citizens.

When I asked Keenan whom he might want at the dinner table, he sent me a long list, resulting in the remarkable mix of perspectives in our conversation, which also includes activist/writer
Desmond Cole
(who brings a pointed perspective on race that I just don’t have space for in this column) and a columnist for a newspaper I’ll refer to as the Distinguished Competition.

When they entered and greeted each other with warm hugs of familiarity, I failed to introduce Keenan’s wife, Rebecca. I felt like a jackass. The guest who doesn’t know anyone, particularly if a spouse, needs to be treated with the most attention at the beginning of the night.

If I didn’t have such a strong crew of guests, I wouldn’t cook steak for dinner. But by the third course, with characters so talented at conversing, I could disappear for 20 minutes without any notice. So I have time to babysit a couple of rib-eyes as they brown in the pan and poke them every few minutes to feel when they’ve reached medium rare.

Keenan, his hair far more sparse than in his author photo, speaks quietly, like a slightly shy professor. He stresses that, while pitting urban versus suburban may be good for campaigning, Toronto has not prospered by dividing against itself. He grew up in Riverdale but moved to Lawrence and Markham at 12, so he’s seen both sides.

“Whoever the next mayor is,” he says, “and the mayor after that, and the council we have next, has to continue to communicate — It sounds too pat, right? — with every part of the city and to listen.”

Toronto, if you’ve not heard, is having a little legal trouble with its mayor. With the lead-time of this column, I don’t know who will be mayor by the time it appears.

If we should need a new mayor, Keenan would like to see a variety of people running. “For the vibrancy of the city, for everybody’s interest, I think it would be neat to have a real debate with a bunch of real candidates.”

There has never been a shortage of people who want to be mayor.

“You’ve got 44 city councillors. Every one of them thinks they could be mayor,” says Merkley. “And every one of them is getting told all day long by their constituents, that they could be.” He too would like the mayor to be judged by a general election. “I still believe that you get the government you deserve. But I want us to think that we deserve something better.”

That something better isn’t necessarily a person or a political mandate. It is, and here I’m interpreting from Keenan’s book, the involvement of our citizens.

“While you cannot impose citizen engagement and a sense of community on people, you can build the infrastructure to allow them to form a community and express themselves, then follow their lead,” he writes. “Toronto is now in an excellent position to have a real debate about its future — and an emergency decision about who should be mayor, in the wake of all the battles we’ve recently gone through, provides as big a spotlight for that debate as we’re likely to see.”

For a dinner table mired in municipal issues on a weekly basis, it seems fitting that this night descends into a bitter division over the value of Star Wars (deadlocked at three-to-three). But say what you will about Darth Vader, but he got those Death Stars built. And they are like the size of ten Gardiners wrapped around a Transit City.

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